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Solution-Focused Brief Therapy for Depression in an Indian Tribal Community: A Pilot Study

Jaseem Koorankot, Tilottama Mukherjee, Z. A. A. Ashraf

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the outcome of solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) in the context of a tribal community in India and to get some insights about the applicability of solution-focused practice in Indian community mental health settings. The tribal community had a low socio economic status and the clients all had a depressive disorder. The team was comprised of a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist, a psychiatric social worker, a psychiatric nurse, and a pharmacist, who visit rural areas and later, treats psychiatric clients in their neighbourhood. Nine clients with depression received SFBT along with SSRI medication. The Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) was used to measure the severity of the depressive symptoms before and after the treatment. The European Brief Therapy Associations SFBT-research protocol was applied in all therapy. The Wilcoxon sign-ranked test was used to analyse the data. Results indicate that there was significant decrease in the severity of distress after the treatment, which suggests SFBT was effective in reducing depressive symptoms in the clients.

Keywords

community mental health service (CMHS); solution-focused brief therapy; depression; Indian tribal community

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